The Other Guardians
by Saru Wolfe
Summary: While leading a small team on a mundane mission, Denarian Saal runs into something huge, literally. A Nova Corps adventure set pre-movie. Includes Corpsman Dey and Nova Prime. Now revised.


The roar of takeoff faded second by second into a soft hiss as the Nova corvette _Transverse_ slipped out of the last remnants of Xandar's atmosphere. Though still inside the gravity well, the engines shuddered from their powerful in-atmo rumble to the deep hum of standard subwarp.

"Minimum complement, including only myself, my aide Alara, and Corpsmen Dey, Rino, Dursta, and Ilavez. We are outbound for the city of Kis to wring a report from the acting denarian in charge."

Sunlight beamed across the hull from two directions. It was a small craft, meant for a crew of perhaps fifteen. The largest part of the vessel was the compact bay, which stored two single-pilot fighters. Aside from that it was only a bridge, a cramped engine room, and communal quarters.

"Objections were raised. Nova Prime dismissed them."

Somewhere on the other side of the bridge was harried muttering.

"Expected duration—" Saal stopped mid-sentence and gestured for his aide to stop recording the log. "_Corpsman_ Dey, private calls to a minimum, please."

Dey started. "Sorry, sir." He murmured an apologetic "Have to go, sweetheart," and shut off his station's comm. "It's my daughter; she's—"

"Sick, I know." Dey had been fretting since before departure. Granted, he hadn't been a father very long, but from what Saal had managed to extract, the illness wasn't anything serious. The man would turn himself grey at this rate. "We'll be back in a matter of hours."

Dey worried at the hem of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."

From beside him, Dursta patted his shoulder. "Don't worry. Children that age get sick all the time."

Dey's eyes widened miserably.

There was a thunderous _crack_ and the ship lurched to the left. Saal, standing in the middle of the deck, narrowly avoided falling straight into Alara. Even so they both hit the grating under them hard, and Ilavez tumbled out of her chair. Minor alarms went off across the bridge.

Saal got to his feet just after his aide and straightened his uniform viciously. "_What_ the hell was that?" he asked once he had a grip on the back of the pilot's chair.

"We ran into something, sir," the pilot replied helpfully.

"Specifics, Rino."

"I can't, sir. The sensors still aren't showing anything." She ran the scanner frequency up and down the scale to no effect. Meanwhile the _Transverse_ drifted back to the right.

Saal glanced at the display again and then peered out the viewport, but either way he could not see a thing. "Bring us portside, then. Slowly."

"Yessir."

The ship continued its starboard journey.

"I said port, corpsman."

"Trying, sir." Rino pulled a face at the controls. "The engines are responding, but they're not doing any good." She kicked the thrusters up a notch, but it only resulted in the creaking of strained metal—no change in course.

Saal certainly wasn't taking risks with an invisible force pulling the entire ship in the wrong direction. "Keep trying. Shields up."

"Yes, sir," called Corpsman Ilavez. "Shields up."

"Contact Xandar." Saal pursed his lips at the stars sliding slowly by. "Perhaps _they_ know what we hit."

Dey's station let out a discouraging noise. "Sir! We're being jammed across the board!"

Saal closed his eyes briefly. "Oh, blast."

The expanse of space was swallowed up by a close-up view of metal paneling, and a clang sounded with terrible finality.

The bridge was silent. Rino had put the engines on standby, and no one spoke as the six of them stared out the viewport.

"What am I looking at?" Saal asked wearily.

Rino prodded at her console. "A wall," Dey offered. "Looks like. Sir."

Saal couldn't find it in himself to summon any sarcasm to that. "Ilavez?"

"We didn't take any damage, sir," she replied thoughtfully. "And shields are holding."

"Anything yet, Rino?"

Rino did not reply immediately. Her fingers tapped the edge of the console. Finally, she said, "Sensors say we're inside a ship, sir."

"_Wha-at_," breathed Dey.

Saal took a quick step and leaned forward to narrow his eyes at the paneling in front of them. "You're telling me that's a hangar wall."

"Yes, sir?"

Saal shot a last glare at the view before turning away and folding his arms. "So it was a docking ray that pulled us in." The docking ray that larger ships came equipped with would be able to handle a corvette, even with resistance.

"But why didn't we see the ship, sir?" Dursta asked quietly. "Even stealth tech can only do so much."

It was true that Nova ship scanners could pick up at least something even with the most advanced known stealth tech, but the key was 'known.' It was never safe to assume that the corps had a handle on everything they might face. "Nevertheless, we didn't pick them up. What faction might have full-spectrum cloaking technology?"

"No one I've ever seen," Rino quipped immediately.

Saal rolled his eyes. Once Dey was done snickering and Rino had had her moment, he commented, "We're still being jammed, I assume."

Dey cleared his throat. "Not exactly, sir." Saal pulled a dubious expression but let him finish. "I'm getting some short-range channel use, but it's all encrypted. And we can't reach anybody on the planet—or anywhere, really."

"Oh," Dursta said suddenly. "The cloaking—it really is _full_-spectrum."

Something that blocked sensors, comms, and visual was not to be trifled with, especially when the vessel was hovering over Xandar and there was no way of knowing whether there were any more around. That last possibility bothered Saal most. "Can we hail the ship we're inside?"

Dey's brow furrowed at his console. "I think so, sir."

"Do it, then." Not that he had much hope they would respond. If their captors had really wanted them to know anything, they would have spoken up by now. "What do we know about it? Rino?"

Rino had been working at her station without looking up, but now she did, eyes wide. "Sir. It's a carrier."

Alara was leaning over Rino's console immediately, gaze darting over the readout. "I can't get anything past the cloaking," Rino explained, "and they're actually meant for open space—"

"I don't need a disclaimer, corpsman," Saal interrupted patiently. "Just tell me what you have."

Rino nodded, mouth tight. "They have several large hangar bays, sir. And a whole lot of ships."

Alara turned to regard the denarian seriously. "Mostly fighters. Up to fifteen squads depending on organization."

Saal's lips parted soundlessly as he put it all together. And then he declared quietly, "An invasion force."

He stared at the grating through half-lidded eyes as he forced his thoughts into pragmatism instead of panic. He had learned early on that deliberating on the consequences of failure never helped anyone. Right now, they had to do something.

"We have to tell Xandar," Ilavez whispered.

Saal looked up. Dey was chewing on a fingernail and staring at his console, and Alara was scrolling hurriedly through her personal holopad, but the others were looking to him. Ilavez's hands trembled on the controls.

"And we will," he told them. He stood straighter and clasped his hands behind his back. "Options. Not to be obvious, but can we blast our way out?"

Rino squinted and waggled her hand from side to side. "I think we have the space for me to maneuver us around, sir."

"Negative, sir!" Ilavez blurted out. She was still paler than usual but no longer shaking.

Saal raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"

"At this range, any weapons fire would destroy the _Transverse_, sir."

"All right." No wonder their mystery captors had let them be. "Dey, any response?"

"No, sir."

"Not surprising." Saal strode to the back of the bridge. "If we can't get out from inside the ship, we look for a hangar door release on foot." Standard armament was stored in a side panel by the ramp. "Dey, Ilavez, Dursta, with me."

The corpsmen he had volunteered stood up. The ones he had not called on stared with the greatest indignation. "Sir?" Rino piped up.

"Stay," he ordered. "If you have the opportunity to make an escape and alert Nova Prime, you _will_."

"Denarian, as the commanding officer, you should remain here," Alara pointed out shortly.

"Ordinarily, yes." Saal loaded an N2 rifle and opened the ramp. "But _someone_ insisted on a minimum complement."

He led the corpsmen out into the hangar. They fanned out at the bottom of the ramp, but as the scanners had shown, the room was clear. "Perimeter run," Saal said, and gestured for them to split up. Dey guided Ilavez to the left with a comforting hand on the back of her arm. Saal and Dursta headed right.

There was nothing. It could have been a prison for all they saw—and perhaps it was a holding cell for captive ships. It was certainly small enough. There was space for the _Transverse_ to fit in any arrangement they pleased but not much more. Saal could see the seam of the hangar door. Otherwise the walls were smooth, and even Dursta's prodding didn't reveal any control panels.

Halfway around the hangar, by the bow of the ship, they came to a neat row of crates. Saal was opening them one by one (all empty) when Dursta, at the other end of the row, said, "Sir. Look."

He was pointing to one side of a crate, specifically the green symbol stamped onto it. Saal stared hard at it, thumb tapping on the side of his rifle. "I've seen that."

"Lobis Coalition," Dursta supplied.

A system home to mostly corporations, as Saal recalled. "Lobis doesn't have the firepower for an invasion."

"Not without a serious advantage," Dursta pointed out.

Saal grimaced but nodded. "Let's keep moving."

They caught up with Ilavez and Dey on the far side of the room. Ilavez snapped nearly to attention as they approached. "Sir! We found the docking ray."

Dey pointed wordlessly upward. There, mounted four meters above their heads, was an inset docking ray. As far as Saal could tell, it didn't open up into any other areas.

"Control panels?" he prompted his team. "Ventilation shafts? Anything?"

"No, sir," Ilavez admitted.

"There's not even a door out of here, sir," Dey added.

All they had was a docking ray, empty crates, and enough space for a corvette. Saal took a last look around the bay, pursing his lips, and gestured to the _Transverse_'s ramp. "We'll regroup."

By the time they boarded again, Alara's shoulders were in an angry line. She watched Saal expectantly. "There's no obvious way out," he informed her. "But there is some evidence of the Lobis Coalition's involvement. If this _were_ a Lobis ship…"

Alara turned her head so that she could address Rino as well as Saal. "There would be a hardwired ID tag with the serial."

"On it," Rino replied. "I've got—whoa." Tags piled on tags on her readout's listing. "Alar—uh, sir, they're _all_ Lobis, even the fighters."

"Okay, that's the who," Dey said.

Dursta nodded. "And the how. At least, how they have such good cloaking. Lobis Coalition has all the high-tech industries right in the system."

"I'm sure the news reporters will be fascinated," Saal noted dryly. "In the meantime, we are still stuck."

Thoughtful silence reigned. After a few moments, Dey suggested, "Uh, sir? If we can't get out, maybe we could get further in? Their comms have to work, or they wouldn't be able to stage an invasion."

"We still have no way out of the hangar," Dursta put in gently.

Rino turned around in her chair. "If we're talking about making our own doors, why not just blast a _little_ hole? Even one big enough for one of our fighters to get out."

Ilavez shook her head adamantly. "No weapons fire."

"But if we piled in and used the _Transverse_ as a shield—"

Dey snorted. "Six of us pile into two single fighters?"

"_Denarian_!" Alara interposed, suddenly intent. "The fighters are standard."

"Yes," Saal agreed impatiently.

"Equipped with suspension beams. We _can_ shoot our way out."

The denarian considered it. "You mean to reverse the beam."

"Yes."

"If we set them on repulsor…" Dey held his hands out half a meter apart. "And we widen the beam—I mean, sir, it might take both fighters, but we could push all the debris and stuff from the explosion outward."

Rino grinned. "And then the _Transverse_ can cruise right out. Totally undamaged."

It was viable. More importantly, it was their best option. But Saal couldn't let them celebrate yet. "We have to assume that there are more carriers waiting out there," he said flatly. "Carriers we can't see. We'll have to move quickly to escape the docking ray, and then we will have to keep moving until we can get a message through."

Rino deflated slightly. "Without getting shot down."

"Preferably," Saal agreed.

"Sir?" Dursta ventured. "The fighters could lead the way. Even this cloaking tech can't fool suspension beams. They react to matter."

"Good. What's the range?"

"About seventy-five meters."

Rino's eyes widened. "That's some tight steering. Sir."

"Can you do it?" Saal asked her directly.

"Of _course_, sir."

"Dursta?"

Dursta met his gaze, and if he appeared less confident than Rino, he was no less earnest. "Yes. Yes, sir."

So be it. "Then the two of you get in the fighters. We're leaving."

The explosion was precise and, thanks to the suspension beams, harmless to the corvette. Rino spun through the opening immediately, the golden glow of the beam still hovering in front of her fighter. Dursta's craft came next, though he was careful to stay just in front of the _Transverse_. Saal, at the helm, guided them out. Ilavez sent a decisive shot into the docking ray as soon as they were clear, and they dove out of the way of the blast.

The three craft sped straight for Xandar's surface one after the other. It was an almost surreal race; though there seemed to be nothing between them and their goal, any meter of space could be another enemy carrier. Outside the carrier's cloaking, their scanners worked properly again, even if their comms did not, and they flew in silence.

A bolt flashed across the viewport. The shields emitted the warped rumble that meant another shot had made contact.

"Multiple directions, sir," Ilavez reported. "Shields are holding, but the fire is coming from several ships."

They didn't have long, then. "Dey," Saal prompted, eyes locked on Dursta's fighter ahead of him.

"Still jammed, sir."

"Keep—"

The shield thundered under another salvo, and the whole _Transverse_ shook.

"Damage?" Saal demanded.

Ilavez did not hesitate. "Minor, sir, but we have no shields."

Rino pulled up suddenly, and Saal followed. Dursta, however, dropped out of sight. Saal gritted his teeth. The sensors showed that Dursta was positioning himself behind them. "What is he doing?" he bit out.

Alara sifted through the sensor readings. "He's cut off the suspension beam. All available power is in rear shields."

Saal glanced at the readout and saw the fighter wings spread at right angles with a small shield expanding behind them. Dursta tailed them as closely as possible, keeping the shield between their invisible enemies' fire and the _Transverse_.

"Sir, maybe we can still drop back behind him?" Dey tried.

"No. He wouldn't cooperate." Saal's mouth set in a grim line and he adjusted course to keep them just behind Rino. "And he's right." They would never make it out of the jamming field otherwise.

Rino banked. Saal followed as well as he could, but the side of the corvette skimmed off something, and the viewport lit up with cannon fire. Rino only banked harder, and their path curved downward until they leveled out, heading once more straight for Xandar's surface. They were at what Saal estimated to be mid-orbit, and from here the planet looked too large to be this far away.

Two shots flashed by, one of which glanced off Rino and sent her ship in a slow spiral. The bridge erupted in alerts. "Shut those off," he ordered Alara. "_Dey_."

"Not yet, sir!"

Saal almost did not hear the alert that meant a terminated signal.

"We lost Dursta," Alara told him softly.

Saal glanced down at the scanners anyway, gaze catching desperately on the empty space where his corpsman should have been behind him.

But he could not afford to dwell on it; none of them could. Xandar loomed in front of them, as yet still whole. Saal's concentration was fixed on Rino's smoking craft. He had no time for silences or hesitations. "What about Rino?"

"Fighter is damaged but functional."

Then they could keep going, and so they would. At first the almost inaudible buzz seemed to be the noise of high atmosphere, but all at once it rose and burst into static, and a tinny, harried voice said, "—_verse, come in, what is going on up there_?"

Saal let out a sharp breath even as Dey pounded the comm control and rattled off, "Flight control, this is Corpsman Dey with the Nova _Transverse_. We are under attack, I repeat, under attack, by an invasion force of unknown size."

"_Transverse_, _we're not reading anything out there._"

"I _repeat_, under attack," Dey enunciated.

Saal lifted a hand from the controls long enough to gesture forward. Dey transferred the call to his console. "This is Denarian Saal. Xandar is currently under threat from a Lobis Coalition fleet equipped with full-spectrum cloaking technology. _Send_ someone up here."

The two-second pause felt like an hour of silence. "_Understood, Transverse. Stand by for assistance_."

"Finally," Saal muttered. "Dey, alert Rino."

"Right away, sir."

"Did we tell them?" Rino asked as soon as she was pinged.

"Yeah," Dey answered. There was a hint of a relieved laugh in his voice. "How are you holding up?"

"Fantastic."

Saal honed in on it at once, because Rino was a terrible liar. "Corpsman Rino," he called firmly.

"I'm not sure she'll make it in atmo, sir," she admitted. "I'm burning up engine fluid."

A tone sounded from his console, and Saal looked down. The air support was coming up to meet them. "Fold the fighter wings, corpsman. We'll take you in."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Ilavez, you have the bay door. Keep it open until Rino is inside."

"Denarian," Alara began sternly.

"Xandar has been alerted and they're sending up a fleet now," Saal reminded her. "Keep an eye on the sensors, will you?"

It was harder than it seemed to maneuver the _Transverse_ so that they could scoop up Rino. The fighter wove and wobbled without the support of the wings, but the craft would never fit in the tiny hangar otherwise. For seven full seconds, the smoke from Rino's engines obscured the viewport, and Saal had to rely on Alara's direction. Everything shuddered when they hit the atmosphere proper, but the resistance straightened Rino's fighter at last.

And then they had her, and the bay doors thudded shut. Saal could hear Ilavez slump back in her seat.

The Nova Corps defense fleet came rising up to meet them. The perfect formation parted to let the corvette through, and the fighter wings twitched in a salute as they passed.

"_Transverse, you are cleared to land at the east pad_," flight control informed them.

Dey took over. "Copy that. Thanks, flight control."

"_Nah, thank you, Transverse._"

Saal set the navigation on the proper vector. The sense of urgency was fading, but Saal did not want to leave room for other considerations just yet—not until they had safely landed and seen to the invasion attempt.

The hatch to the hangar creaked open, and hoarse coughing filled the bridge. Saal looked back long enough to see Rino, dirtied and streaked with smoke, pulling herself out of the hatch and throwing it shut again.

"Rino!" Ilavez cried.

"Hey, welcome back!" said Dey.

"Sir?" Rino called. Saal turned to face her. She was sitting on the floor, slumped wearily against the bulkhead, but she smiled anyway. "Did we win?"

They did win, eventually. Saal and his crew did not see the battle in person, but he, Alara, and Dey watched from Nova Prime's CIC as the defense fleet brought ion nets to bear on Lobis' ships. Ion nets were rarely used and practical for little other than immobilizing small craft without damage, but used in a wide spread they could locate the cloaked carriers. As Saal and Dursta had predicted, the stealth tech had been Lobis' only advantage. On being discovered, what carriers that escaped Nova's rain of fire beat a hasty retreat.

Afterwards, he found Ilavez and Rino just outside, leaning against each other and waiting for the officers to file out. Saal stopped in front of them. "We won," he announced.

They were too wrung out to show much enthusiasm, but he understood their efforts. Ilavez's face clouded over again. "Sir? I'm sorry, sir, but did they ever find… anything?"

One corner of Saal's mouth constricted, and his voice stayed low. "No." There had been no trace of a body to recover. "But Corpsman Dursta will still have a service."

Ilavez nodded, gaze on the floor. Rino shouldered her. "Come on; let's go to the mess. Saving the world works up an appetite." She straightened up to salute Saal. "Denarian, sir."

Saal returned the salute and sent them off. As he watched them go, obviously weary but still standing straight, he recalled that this had only been Ilavez's tenth mission or so. She was shaping up to be a fine soldier. With any luck, her career wouldn't get any more interesting.

"We did good, sir," Dey said suddenly.

Saal brought himself back to the present. "Hmm?"

Dey's brow was furrowed, but he looked sure of himself. "You know, saving the planet. We're practically heroes, sir—all of us."

Saal did not reply at once. He wasn't sure whether the words warmed him or weighed on him. After a moment, he said, "Go see to your daughter, corpsman."

Dey knew better than to take it personally. "Okay, sir."

That left Alara, who was far too observant to be left unchecked. Already she was eyeing him resolutely.

"_Don't_ say that it could have been worse," Saal advised, almost dryly.

Alara's attention returned innocently to her holopad. "With anyone else, it _would_ have been."

It would have sounded absurd coming from anyone but her, and even then he would have argued had he not been able to look at the view over her shoulder and see an untouched city. "Alara, you're—"

"Dismissed, denarian?"

He exhaled testily and she saw herself out.

An hour later, Saal was summoned to Nova Prime's offices, where he gave her the full report himself. Nova Prime listened with the same attentive, sharp gaze she used in all matters of importance. And then she said, "I'll notify the outlying planets to watch for the Lobis Coalition. They need to be dealt with."

"Yes, Nova Prime."

"So does the denarian at Kis."

Saal remained studiously silent.

"Relax. That can wait, and a different team can see to it."

"Thank you, ma'am."

She stood. If she was tired, it didn't show. "That will be all, denarian."

Saal got to his feet and saluted. He was halfway to the door when she added, "If you're thinking this might bring you a promotion…"

He turned, one eyebrow quirked. It hadn't occurred to him.

Nova Prime met his look evenly. "Don't." She strode past him, back into the CIC. "This incident has only shown that you are a man I need in the field, Denarian Saal."

Despite everything, Saal could not bring himself to be disappointed.


End file.
